Psychiatry’s Problem with No Name

Abstract

The inclusion in the Hippocratic oath of a specific injunction against a physician’s having sexual relationships with patients indicates that this concern has a venerable history among physicians. Elaboration of these same ethical proscriptions in the current annotated version of medical ethics applicable to psychiatrists confirms that this concern exists into the present.1 Moral outrage is regularly expressed by physicians toward those physicians who, in spite of the ethical restraints imposed by the above-mentioned codes, nonetheless indulge themselves sexually with their patients. Yet the force and sincerity of the call for integrity among physicians2–4 does not appear to have much deterrent effect on that segment of the profession that chooses to have sex with their patients.